Digitally Unfair Action, Playing Politics, Oct 2025

Why an EU consultation about dark patterns is itself dark pattern design

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• We examine the dark patterns at the heart of a consultation about…dark patterns

• US Senators write to the Treasury Secretary to express concern over the EA acquisition

• Trump tariff case heads to the Supreme Court on 5th November

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Hello VGIM-ers,

Welcome back to Playing Politics. In this month’s edition, I take a look at the sneaky digital practices underpinning a new law that is all about, erm, stopping digital sneaky practices.

There’s also a quick run-through of some of the big political and policy developments shaping the games business. And as if that’s not helpful enough, we also have a few dates to put in your diary to keep you on top of things.

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What I imagine Supercell’s lobbyists look like - Source: Supercell

Digitally Unfair Action

Pattern matching: The European Union’s forthcoming Digital Fairness Act (DFA) is a pretty big deal for the games industry. The law, which is wending its way through the labyrinthine Brussels bureaucracy, seeks “to tackle unethical techniques and commercial practices related to dark patterns, marketing by social media influencers, the addictive design of digital products and online profiling, especially when consumer vulnerabilities are exploited for commercial purposes”. Catchy stuff, I know.

Fit and firing: Despite the DFA very clearly gunning for video game design practices, as seen through a ‘fitness check’ run by the Commission last year, the games industry has seemingly only just woken up to the danger on its doorstep. Illka Paananen, Supercell’s Chief Exec, penned an open letter warning that overreach by the DFA risked killing off the European video game success story, given that it could potentially put hefty barriers in the way of easily selling in-game items and currency.

Timely intervention: But what prompted Paananen’s intervention? Besides fears that the DFA could wipe at least a few percentage points off Finland’s GDP, his intervention came just a couple of weeks before an open consultation into the new rules closed its doors for submission.

Design flaws: Interestingly, having chatted to a fair few people behind the scenes, it turns out that it isn’t just the potential contents of the new law that’s worrying the business. VGIM sources have suggested that the design of the consultation is designed to give a greater voice to supporters of the law than the critics.

Hypocritical?: And the way it does that is by using design practices that would, almost certainly, be defined as dark patterns by the Commission - leading to accusations of hypocrisy.